Critical Remembrance And Eschatological Hope In Edward Schillebeeckx’S Theology Of Suffering For Others

HeyJ XLIV (2003), pp. 15–42

CRITICAL REMEMBRANCE AND
ESCHATOLOGICAL HOPE IN EDWARD
SCHILLEBEECKX’S THEOLOGY OF
SUFFERING FOR OTHERS
ELIZABETH K. TILLAR
St Anselm College, Manchester, NH

I. INTRODUCTION

The biblical prototypes of suffering for others – the eschatological
prophet and messianic high priest – are correlated in the present article
with Edward Schillebeeckx’s examination of two vital concepts to pro-
vide the basis for a critical praxis: anamnesis, or the critical remem-
brance of history, and eschatological hope. The dialectical opposites of
anamnesis and hope, which Schillebeeckx deems crucial for solidarity
with suffering and its alleviation, are embodied by the aforementioned
scriptural figures. Indeed, critical remembrance and hope are intrinsic to
the images of Jesus as the ‘suffering righteous one’ and the eschato-
logical messianic high priest in Schillebeeckx’s theology of suffering for
others. Both the images and the critical concepts prove essential in his
historical reconstruction of the eschatological communities, religious
figures, and symbols in Hebrews and 1 Peter, among other New Testament
documents. Moreover, they attest to Schillebeeckx’s deep engagement
with the Frankfurt School of social critical theory. In his later work
(published during the 1970s and 1980s), such critical ideas serve to culti-
vate an eschatological sensibility and an ethical praxis, made possible
by grace mediated through voluntary suffering.

II. ANAMNESIS, OR CRITICAL REMEMBRANCE OF HISTORY

Anamnesis, or the remembrance of Christ’s passion and the history of
suffering humanity, is defined by Schillebeeckx in terms of its prophetic
and critical function: ‘In the sense of biblical anamnesis (zikkaron) or

© The Editor/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Oxford, UK and Boston, USA.

16 ELIZABETH K. TILLAR

remembrance, remembrance in the history of God with man in Jesus
Christ is not just a matter of reminding oneself what took place at an
earlier stage. It is a return to the past with an eye to action in the present.
God “reminds himself” of his earlier saving acts in and through new acts
of liberation.’ Schillebeeckx applies Jürgen Habermas’s unification of
theory and praxis to his re-conceptualization of liturgy.1 This example
of his applied method embodies the recognition that liturgy – the heart
of which is the memoria passionis Christi – contains an intrinsic ele-
ment of protest against unjust socio-political structures and any human
enterprise that causes suffering. Indeed, as the critical dimension in
liturgical remembrance, socio-political protest is a stimulus to ethical
action in the present.2

Reference to what is actually done here and now is an essential part of the biblical
view of memory. From a social and historical point of view, the revolutionary critical
epistemological value of the memoria passionis Christi, which presents a challenge
to the world and society, does not lie directly in the past history of suffering (though
that is where it has its origin) or in the kerygma or dogma, those so-called ‘danger-
ous memorial formulas’ which describe his suffering; rather, it is communicated by
the living Christian community, that is, by the contemporary church itself, in so far
as it is an active memoria passionis of the risen Lord.3

Schillebeeckx reminds us that the association of liberating actions
of particular people (the magnalia dei) with the elements of liturgy –
narrative, doxology, hymns, and the Eucharist – has a biblical basis and
is thus an integral part of the Judeo-Christian traditions: ‘It is therefore
unbiblical to draw a contrast between the doxological or hymnic character
of the liturgy and a so-called “activism” which is concerned with the
betterment of man, his world and society.’4 The sacramental dimension
of the church and social activism, i.e., contemplation leading to the
articulation of socio-political theory and theologically informed praxis
are eminently compatible.5

We cannot experience God in the church’s liturgy if we can no longer see him
anywhere outside the church. Were that to happen, then I fear that our liturgical
sensibilities would have no religious content of reality; and this liturgical void
cannot be filled, at least for the longer term, with a liturgical appeal to ethical action
or a critical attitude towards culture. That would be to misunderstand the ‘balance’
on which the deepest ethical stimuli are based.6

The Epistle to the Hebrews is the main scriptural source for
Schillebeeckx’s development of anamnesis, or remembered suffering,
as a critical concept – one which has been expanded by theologians
and social scientists to include the critical recollection of any tradition.7
The Epistle depicts a Jewish-Christian community practising a new
way of life, recasting old forms of worship in Christological terms, and
abolishing a few of the ancient liturgical traditions. As a marginalized

EDWARD SCHILLEBEECKX’S THEOLOGY OF SUFFERING FOR OTHERS 17

group, the congregation of Hebrews practised prophetic criticism in fol-
lowing Jesus’ way of life.8 Schillebeeckx characterizes the congregation
as eschatological and ‘episynogogal.’9 The sacrificial mediation of Jesus
as high priest in the Epistle to the Hebrews reveals liturgical continuity
(from a Jewish to a Jewish-Christian assembly) that reflects Jesus’ role
in the context of Israel’s salvation history, but the author of Hebrews
contrasts the provisional nature of Mosaic sacrifice with the efficacy of
grace mediated by Jesus, in obedience to God and in solidarity with
suffering humanity.10
Schillebeeckx perceives the community of Hebrews, despite its (perhaps
unavoidably) closed character,11 as a fitting model for the contemporary
church. First of all, the community of Hebrews has an ethical orientation
based on the belief that the heavenly things of the future age must
be realized in history.12 That does not mean, says Schillebeeckx, that
the boundary between the present and the parousia disappears; for the
author of Hebrews, the Jewish proton and eschaton remain the temporal
poles of history within which the spatial (two-storey) Greek model
of the universe has been integrated.13 In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the
‘true tent’ of the covenant is the future world, positioned above the
earthly plane, and the church is its ‘vestibule’ – already elevated to
the heavenly realm yet still separated from eternity by the curtain of the
holy of holies.14 Schillebeeckx interprets the congregation of Hebrews as
‘an eschatological assembly in which the church on earth is already
taking part, albeit in confident expectation of the parousia (10:37–39).’15
Bradford Hinze says of Schillebeeckx’s own non-dualistic conception
of history and salvation: ‘Rather than speak about a history divided into
the city of humankind and the city of God, a natural plane and a super-
natural plane, or a secular history and a sacred history, there is an
insistence on the oneness of history.’16 In The Mission of the Church,
Schillebeeckx specifies the relationship between the historical and the
eschatological realities in contemporary Christianity, a perspective that
reflects that of the Epistle to the Hebrews:

The good fruits of humanity and human activity – especially human dignity, brotherly
love, and freedom (there is an echo here of the slogan egalité, fraternité, liberté) –
which are propagated on earth in the spirit of Christ will be found again in the
eschatological kingdom, but purified from all stains and inwardly transparent and
transfigured. At the end of time, there will be a kingdom of justice, love and peace.
But this kingdom is already present in a veiled form in this world. It will ultimately
be completed in Christ’s parousia.17

Johann-Baptist Metz’s overriding concern with remembered suffering
reverberates in Schillebeeckx’s theology; and their shared emphasis on
the realization of salvation within secular history largely accords with
the viewpoint of Hebrews. A non-dualistic conception of history and
salvation is essential to a theology of suffering that is focused on the


realization of the humanum. Schillebeeckx is largely in accord with
Metz’s view of history/salvation history:

Metz opposes an attitude which can often be seen, in which a distinction is drawn
between the history of suffering within the world and an other-worldly history of
glory, and only in this way does he also reject the dichotomy between secular his-
tory and salvation history. World history itself must be made into salvation history.
One cannot reconcile the two of them either speculatively or theoretically – nor,
however can they be formally contrasted. Therefore for Metz salvation history is in
fact world history itself, in so far as in it salvation and meaning are found for the
oppressed, rejected, and suppressed expectations and the sufferings of humanity.18

Importantly, for Metz, as for Schillebeeckx, social movements or
political institutions cannot be the universal subject of history; only God
‘in his eschatological freedom is the universal subject and meaning of
history.’19 As Metz conceives it, the ‘eschatological remembrance’ of Jesus’
passion and resurrection liberates, protects, and gives direction to politi-
cal life; and it prefigures a future for those who have been abandoned,
victimized, and vanquished. It is ‘a future which must be created through
solidarity with the weaker and the weakest among us.’20 The memoria
passionis can potentially result in a new direction for politics in the
management of economic and technological affairs and a new sense of
responsibility toward the ‘other,’ including all of those whose experi-
ences have been omitted from the ‘canonical’ histories of civilization:

It forces us to look at the theatricum mundi not merely from the standpoint of the
successful and the established, but from that of the conquered and the victims. This
recalls the function of the court fool in the past: he represents an alternative
(rejected, vanquished, or oppressed) to his master’s policy; his function was strictly
political and in no way ‘purely aesthetic.’ His politics was, so to speak, a politics of
the memory of suffering – as against the traditional political principle of ‘woe to the
conquered,’ and against the Machiavellian ruler.21

Both Metz and Schillebeeckx refuse to espouse a definite plan of
salvation, but Schillebeeckx finds Metz too reluctant to elucidate the
positive connection between history and eschatological salvation. Although
he applauds Metz’s refusal to dichotomize the two and commends the
critical reflection on human suffering in Metz’s theology,22 Schillebeeckx
also expresses his reservation:

But what I miss in Metz is a really theological consideration of the memoria thesis.
Metz does not reflect on the concept of God as he is understood in the light of Jesus,
as a God of pure positivity, as the author of good and enemy of evil. And this concept
of God must colour what is in itself a correct theory of the narrative communication
of the history of human suffering in a special way which Metz does not analyse.23

Even though Metz correctly posits God rather than humankind as the
universal subject of history, Schillebeeckx surmises that – in the absence


of a positive articulation of God vis-à-vis the memoria passionis Christi
– suffering humanity inadvertently usurps God’s role in Metz’s theology.
‘In other words, his political theology seems to be to be [sic] unfinished
and insufficiently worked out.’24
A theological corrective to Metz, with respect to the aforementioned
critique, can be found in Schillebeeckx’s analysis of Hebrews, in which
he articulates God’s relation to Jesus’ self-sacrifice and the history of
human suffering. The epistle stresses the humanity of Jesus, who suffers
corporeally for the sake of others, while at the same time it venerates
the transcendence of God with whom Jesus achieves eschatological
communion:
What lies between the proton and the eschaton, the first and the last, is the human
history of suffering, atonement, guilt, and unrighteousness. It is therefore in accord-
ance with the character of God – who is absolutely the first and finally the last in
creation – that in seeking to bring men to this eschaton in and through Jesus, he
should make Jesus follow the same human career, the way of human suffering.
He bears our sorrow, our anxiety, our burden of sin, in order to be the first to achieve
perfection by means of a human life. In other words, he achieves eschatological
communion with God, so that on the basis of his self-sacrifice … we may be
brought through him and with him to this eschatological communion with the living
God.…25

For Schillebeeckx, Christ’s hypostatic union extends into the realm of
history; although the sacred and the secular are not yet synonymous,
they are intimately conjoined through the mystery of grace: ‘The history
of this world is therefore not sacralized, because it preserves its specific
quality, but sanctified, included in the absolute and gratuitous presence
of the mystery.’26 With respect to the attainment of eschatological com-
munion with God, Schillebeeckx perceives the capacity for human self-
transcendence as originating in ‘the transcendence of God, who, in a
transcendent yet inward manner, enables man to go beyond what he has
already accomplished and move towards what he hopes for and what
has been promised to him. In other words, man is able, by virtue of the
divine transcendence within him, to transcend the “already” and strive
towards the “not yet”.’27 In Hebrews, Jesus as the eschatological high priest
is a paradigm of humanity’s capacity for self-transcendence through his
voluntary sacrifice of life for others in obedience to God’s will, which
he experienced inwardly: ‘Jesus experienced his sacrifice for his fellow
men as God’s cause. The recognition of the deity of God is at the same
time the recognition of the unexpected humanity of man.’28
With respect to its relevance for the contemporary church, the com-
munity of Hebrews has a mystical dimension and a liturgical form that
focus its attention on the transcendent reality of God, which the church
on earth ideally enshrines. At the same time, the ‘exodus community’ is
shown to be radically critical of society and of its own religious traditions
in keeping with Jesus’ prophetic criticism. In brief, it is a congregation


committed to the belief that what has been promised in heaven must be
realized on earth:
Thus, following the tradition of ancient Israel, Hebrews preaches the model of the
church as an exodus community. This happens in all New Testament writings, but
Hebrews and 1 Peter are the most radical. The exodus is that of a community of God
which lives on the periphery of this world and is critical of it; it lives alongside
worldly society and inwardly builds up a new specifically Christian community….29

Like the dual emphasis of that congregation, anchored in Hebrew prophecy
and Jewish worship and simultaneously focused on the consummation of
a Jewish-Christian vision, the contemporary church’s dialectical
orientation – to its formative period and ancient liturgical traditions, at
one pole, and to its promised future, at the other – is imperative. ‘A simple
appeal to the present, to immediacy and to contemporary basic human
experiences without anamnesis or memory, and without prolepsis or
eschatological reference is not a Christian possibility.’30 But contempor-
ary experiences also have an intrinsic authority – mediated by reference
to the history of suffering and to the eschatological hope of redemption:
The concern for contemporary human experiences in nature, history, with people
in a very concrete society, also shapes the authority of ‘Christian experiences.’ Seen
from a Christian perspective, ‘experiences’ have authority therefore first of all in the
living context of a mutual theoretical-critical and practical-critical correlation of
apostolic experiences of faith then and our experiences now, wherein the intervening
period plays a special role.31

Schillebeeckx identifies the ‘principle for the interpretation of reality’ as
the resistance of mundane reality to human aspirations and projects.
Such ‘crucifying experiences’ evoke a change of being – a metanoia
– that propels individuals and society toward a new integration and
orientation.32 ‘The authority of experiences therefore culminates in human
stories of suffering: stories of suffering over misfortune and failure, the
suffering of pain, the suffering of evil and injustice, the suffering of and
in love, sorrow or guilt. Here lie the great elements of the revelation of
reality in and through finite human experiences.’33 Schillebeeckx perceives
human existence as having a narrative structure, which is the basis of
traditions: ‘Traditions, formed from collective experience, become the
social framework for understanding – the common stories of families,
communities, and cultures.’34 Narratives of suffering – whether of remote
historical events or recent experiences – must be recited or recounted in
liturgy to provide the leaven for a contemporary praxis of liberation and
the evolution of the humanum. That is to say, the liturgical expression
must embody and demonstrate an ethical praxis; if it is to be truly prod-
uctive of good works, liturgy must be critical of unjust social and political
structures, including ecclesiastical structures. It is through anamnesis,
when defined as the critical remembrance of Christ’s passion and the


history of suffering humanity, that new saving acts are initiated. ‘It is
precisely the Christian gospel which lives by the critical recollection of
the human history of suffering: it recalls the message and praxis of
Jesus, who was concerned for the poor and the oppressed and therefore
also himself experienced suffering and a painful death.’35 In Schillebeeckx’s
conception of critical praxis, the ‘revelatory power’ of narrative – or
stories of past suffering narrated in liturgy – evokes emancipative action,
which, in turn, occasions ‘new memories’:

Specifically in the context of human suffering, narrative has the further power of
retrieving the history of those whose lives have been forgotten, the invisible characters
in the human story who have been dismissed as insignificant. Narrative and praxis
are integrally related because remembrance of past human suffering carries an
implicit ethical demand – it becomes a stimulus for liberating action. At a new
moment in the tradition new responses to the gospel imperative are demanded; ‘new
memories’ of Jesus are discovered.36

The critical recollection of tradition also includes the analysis and
critique of the history of the church, especially with a view to the retrieval
of lost human potential and disregarded traditions or contributions of
oppressed individuals. ‘Often the history of theology is, too, a history of
conquerors and powerful ones who marginalize evangelically possible
alternatives or even, once conquered, silence them – although only for a
time, because forgotten truths always work their way back to the sur-
face.’37 Susan Ross designates Schillebeeckx’s conception of the contemp-
orary church’s critical-prophetic role as that of ‘critical community,’ a
construct steeped in his profound awareness of ecclesiastical/human
historicity and his prodigious knowledge of biblical scholarship.38 Ross
defines such critical-prophetic communities, or ‘cells,’39 in her essay on
Schillebeeckx’s soteriology: ‘These communities are critical not only of
unjust structures in society but also of those within the church. Based in
the local community, these groups strive to live out the message of the
kingdom by confronting injustice wherever it is found and by developing
new forms of community that respond to the needs of the present day.’40
It is well to recall that critical communities are precisely what we find
in the primitive Christian era – separate, yet overlapping local con-
gregations, such as the particularized community of Hebrews critically
and selectively appropriating its Jewish heritage and revisioning the
future of humanity in Christological terms. Schillebeeckx discerns in
the critical remembrance of specific religious traditions (such as the
Levitical priestly tradition of Hebrews, which the eschatological Jesus-
Melchizedek supersedes, the means by which past values are either
rejected, or reconsidered and preserved for the future.41 Scripture and the
history of the church abound with examples of the critical examination
and re-conceptualization of various traditions in light of new experi-
ences. Blind conformity to the status quo obscures that fact of ecclesial


history in the interest of maintaining the equilibrium of the present. The
following case study may help to elucidate the critical impulse in
anamnesis, broadly conceived as the critical remembrance of church
tradition, which constitutes part of the task of a contemporary prophetic
theology.
As someone who, though tempered by a sense of realism, champions
critical communities, Schillebeeckx addresses several issues taken up by
them – the mandatory celibacy of priests and the exclusion of women
from the ordained priesthood, to mention only two such examples. In re-
constructing the historical development of these ecclesiastical patterns,
he shows that priestly celibacy and the ban on women’s ordination have
sprung, in part, from laws of ritual purity (as did the genealogy of the
Levitical priesthood). Such fossilized impediments to the renewal of
the church ministry should be removed, says Schillebeeckx, while at the
same time we ought to preserve what is truly apostolic and dogmatic.42
The ‘ideology critique’ of priestly ordination in which Schillebeeckx
engages in his book Ministry: Leadership in the Community of Jesus
Christ is a prime example of the critical recollection of the past as well
as a concrete product of his dialogue with social critical theory. In
exposing the self-serving character of such traditions, as he understands
them, Schillebeeckx is paving the way for the renewal of ministry.
Although the subject of Ministry is too complex for detailed treatment
here, suffice it to say that Schillebeeckx examines conciliar decrees
or doctrines and theological ideas in the history of the priestly office
with an eye to whether they authentically convey the gospel message
or promote self-serving ecclesiastical traditions.43 In his discussion of
apostolicity – the central issue addressed in his controversial book, the
influence of hermeneutics and critical theory is evident: ‘the specific,
legitimate contemporary forms of the apostolicity of the community and
therefore of the ministry (which are constantly changing) cannot be
discovered in purely theoretical terms, but only in a mutually critical
correlation (which must be both theoretical and practical) between what
the New Testament churches did and what the Christian communities do
now.’44
Applied even more comprehensively to the literature of suffering, the
concept of ‘critical remembrance of the past’ includes the recollection
of any tradition with a view to the retrieval of the under-represented or
neglected aspects of history, especially of past human suffering, whether
in the church or in society as a whole. The vantage point from which the
past is combed for such ‘missing links’ is the anticipated future of a
more humane and egalitarian society:
People are concerned with what in many countries is called ‘anti-history’: the his-
tory of the conquered, of unsuccessful revolutions, exiled heretics and millenarians,
of unfulfilled expectations. People look for ‘forgotten truths’ in the past, for every-
thing that has been suppressed from our historical memory by civic prejudice,


rationalistic censorship and the church’s campaign against heretics. So here, too,
people look for support and inspiration in the past.45

In addition to scriptural sources, ecclesial histories, and conciliar docu-
ments, Schillebeeckx has plumbed both theological and non-theological
writings of his contemporaries in the effort to assess the provocative role
of remembered traditions in the humanization process and the in-
breaking of the kingdom of God. In his essay titled ‘Critical Theories
and Christian Political Commitment,’ he makes mention of several
contemporary thinkers whose work has been incorporated into his
distillation of the value of remembered traditions:

Kolakowski has said that, in order to solve the conflicts of human history, man has
to depend on an arsenal of means ‘which can only be found in human traditions.’
Paul Ricoeur too has often drawn attention to the fruitful practice of critically
remembering human traditions in a society such as ours, which has lost its historical
roots and has come to depend on scientific planning and prognosis of the future. A
true revival of the principle of Enlightenment cannot take place either by rejecting
all traditions or by making them all hermeneutically present. It can only be done by
a critical remembrance of certain traditions. It was precisely in this way that the
Western movement of emancipative freedom came about. We internalize the past
not in order to make it present here and now, but rather to save for the future certain
values which might otherwise have been lost in the past. An option for the future
thus always mediates the critical remembrance of the past.46

The critical importance of traditions and institutions from the past
has been fully acknowledged in sociological analysis. Schillebeeckx
notes the concern of Frankfurt School theorists Adorno, Horkheimer,
Habermas, and Marcuse (among other notable thinkers) with critical
remembrance in relation to a ‘meaningful programme for the future.’47
Adorno’s most incisive comments on the subject, particularly the vital
importance of remembered suffering, appear in his article ‘Tradition’:

To insist on the absolute absence of tradition is as naive as the obstinate insistence
on it. Both are ignorant of the past that persists in their allegedly pure relation to
objects; both are unaware of the dust and debris which cloud their allegedly clear
vision. But it is inhuman to forget because accumulated suffering will be forgotten
and the historical trace on things, words, colors, and sounds is always of past suffer-
ing. Thus tradition today poses an insoluble contradiction. There is no tradition
today and none can be conjured, yet when every tradition has been extinguished the
march toward barbarism will begin.48

Schillebeeckx’s positive assessment of the critical remembrance of
traditions is encapsulated in a single sentence in Jesus: An Experiment
in Christology: ‘The “critical recollection of the past” has a humanizing
importance which the Enlightenment failed to notice.’49 In the place of
tradition, he argues, the Enlightenment rationalists envisioned a brother-
hood based on an ‘ideal universal humanity,’ so ahistorical and amorphous


as to be meaningless. ‘A general concept of humanity is always itself
ambiguous; it needs a critical point of reference, a criterion; and this is
in fact given in the record of our human suffering, which since the
Enlightenment has not been all that much alleviated, unless we are to
identify humanity with the welfare of a consumer society based on
science and technology.’50 The identification of Jesus with outcasts, the
poor, sinners, and the disabled provides the needed criterion; Jesus’
compassion embodies the principle of ‘universality through a historic-
ally particular intermediary.’51 For Jesus, the person near at hand, the
neighbour in distress, was the focus of his healing ministry. The message
of universal fellowship that has radiated out from the historical point of
reference – Jesus of Nazareth – to many millions of people throughout
the world ‘without thereby losing anything of its own concretely
historical reference’ is still directed to particular people in need, the
inter-subjective and universal focus of Christianity attested in the New
Testament: ‘Above and beyond all boundaries, those who require help
simply because of their need are “brothers of Jesus”. Thus the brother-
hood is grounded in the long course of human suffering, which has to
be surmounted and which summons us to universal solidarity.’52
The historical specificity embodied in the Christian creed has the
interests of all people at heart. Therefore, Schillebeeckx contends, we
cannot accept the Enlightenment assumption that universal salvation
mediated by Jesus of Nazareth is ‘below the dignity of man, impossible
and pre-critical.’ Schillebeeckx impugns that position as itself unhis-
torical and uncritical.53 Although the Enlightenment’s critical impulse was
often judiciously employed to analyse and challenge social phenomena
to the betterment of the world, Schillebeeckx believes the self-criticism
derived from critical reason was ‘evidently beyond the capacity of the
Enlightenment in the eighteenth century.’54 Yet Schillebeeckx applauds
Enlightenment reason in his book God and Man for the purifying effect
it had on Christianity through its ‘critical impulse.’55 Indeed, the critical
faculty – as expressed in the well-wrought synthesis of discursive and
intuitive modes of thought achieved by Schillebeeckx himself and
brought to bear on the study of Christianity – owes a great debt to the
Enlightenment. His commitment to contemporary Christian faith, em-
bedded as it is in the matrix of secularism, has challenged Schillebeeckx
to scrutinize the old models of Christianity through a critical recollection
of traditions: ‘That in this process of re-thinking the faith mistakes will
be made goes without saying – how could it be otherwise? But these are
the humanly unavoidable byproducts of what are authentically Christian
attempts to prevent the faith from becoming a historical relic and to
make it a living reality here and now.’56
Schillebeeckx’s criteria for a renewed and vibrant tradition – one that
is commensurate with the demands of contemporary life in all of its
ambiguity, yet without making unwarranted concessions to secularism


– are tantamount to a deepening of the faith tradition. The resistance of
the church hierarchy to Schillebeeckx’s innovations has sometimes been
ardent. With respect to such opposition, it is well to recall that the tradition
has always been in flux, i.e., reinterpreted anew in each historical era
and in various cultural contexts, especially by individuals of keen spiritual
sensitivity.57 However, Schillebeeckx calls for more than the inevitable,
perennial sort of change; he advocates an assiduously self-critical stance
on the part of the church:

the criticism of particular images of God, especially images of God which threaten
our humanity, is also an essential aspect of the gospel message of Jesus of Nazareth;
it is even a focus in this message…. On the basis of the parables of Jesus and his
praxis of the kingdom of God we have also seen an analysis of the way in which the
biblical concept of God is essentially bound up with a praxis by which human beings
free their fellows, as Jesus showed us. Precisely because in the course of church
history this link was weakened and even forgotten, and God was ‘objectified’ so
that he became the cornerstone and guarantee of all human knowledge, human order
and action, the one who was appealed to for legitimation of the existing order, and
therefore the enemy of all change, liberation and emancipation, the crisis of the
Enlightenment was historically not only possible, but even ‘inevitable.’58

Similarly, Hans Küng rouses theologians to practise a responsible
scholarly, even scientific approach to Christian apologetics and hermen-
eutics. Such a rigorous endeavour entails an indefatigable inquiry into
the history of Jesus, as uncovered through the historical-critical method
– yet another example of anamnesis, defined here as the critical remem-
brance of tradition. Such a thoroughgoing effort is exemplified par
excellence by Schillebeeckx’s prodigious books Jesus and Christ. With
respect to the historical-critical method, Küng asserts unreservedly:

Only a theology which seriously considers and, as far as possible, attempts to solve
those problems enunciated by history can be seen as functioning at the contemp-
orary level of critical awareness current among those (in the West and in the East)
who have undergone a Western education. Only such scientific theology stands on
a par with the scholarly spirit of our time. Thus it is an unavoidably arduous task
to employ the historical-critical method in a comprehensive sense in order to find
out what we can establish about the Jesus of history with scientific certainty or great
probability. The result of this endeavor is not to abrogate the biblical canon or
church tradition, for indeed the history of dogma finds its roots at the very beginning
of the Christian movement, even in the New Testament.59

The self-critical approach to theology, scripture, and ecclesial history
that both Schillebeeckx and Küng endorse, so necessary for the future
of the church and the world, in no way implies a disregard of tradition.
On the contrary, the critical correlation of our apprehension of historical
tradition, on the one hand, and our analysis of the contemporary situation,
on the other, are essential to any perspective on faith and praxis: ‘This
constant looking in two directions by the believer means that the process


of interpretation in faith will consist in bringing the earlier phases of
the tradition of faith as we understand them into relationship with our
analysis of the contemporary situation … both in the general cultural
and in the specifically Christian sense.’60 Even the authors of the New
Testament creatively adapt ‘what Jesus said in another situation to new
situations, which Jesus did not or could not know in the Palestine of his
time.’61 The adaptation of the gospel within the concrete socio-cultural
circumstances of each Christian fellowship and in every historical era is,
indeed, the history of the church.

In its varied subjects, the church community is the vehicle of this actualization: it
knows that Jesus lives in the church through the gift of the Spirit. This actualization
and even adjustment in faith in no way does away with the historical memory of
what Jesus had said and done. The church community living now bears witness to
the living actuality here and now of Jesus’ gospel which was recorded definitively
in scripture.62

Within Schillebeeckx’s conceptual framework of experience and inter-
pretation, critical remembrance of the history of tradition is dialectically
related to present experience and the theoretical-practical meaning we
ascribe to it: ‘Interpretation and praxis make new traditions, in creative
trust (as we can already see in the multiplicity of the Old and New
Testament writings). That is the living transmission of the tradition of
gospel faith to coming generations.’63
In conclusion, the primary focus of Schillebeeckx’s own theological
ethics, firmly established in the historical point of reference of Jesus of
Nazareth and honed by his encounter with critical theory, is solidarity
with those who suffer in fidelity to the church’s living memory of Jesus
as that is embodied in scripture and encountered in concrete experiences
of suffering. With respect to Schillebeeckx’s view of the church’s role in
salvation history, Hinze says: ‘Christian conversion to a mystical and
ethical way of life requires searching the possibilities for realizing the as
yet unrealized gift of humanity. The gift and task of humanity will be
concretely determined differently in each period in history. However,
the anchor of the church’s ethics, in Schillebeeckx’s view, must be the
commitment to solidarity with the marginalized and the suffering.’64
When the memoria passionis Christi – the memory of Jesus’ suffering
in the body of the church – is expressed in language that is prophetic and
critical, it promotes action that overcomes suffering.65 Indeed, the kerygma
is a liberating force, says Schillebeeckx, only when the memory of Jesus’
passion and resurrection challenges the church to act in solidarity with
the suffering and the oppressed; otherwise, it is mere ideology:

the church is a critical memoria Christi to the degree that its particular way of life
can be shown to and is visible to all, presenting a challenge and leading to revolution,
and in this respect is a living remembrance of Jesus which overcomes suffering.


Unless it goes with a liberating way of life which overcomes suffering, kerygmatic
remembrance cannot have any critical epistemological force. The kerygma of remem-
brance is more the interpretative epistemological aspect of what is in actual fact a
challenging church way of life.66

III. ESCHATOLOGICAL HOPE AS A CRITICAL CONCEPT

In the corpus of Schillebeeckx’s later work, one can also identify hope
as a critical concept in his theology of suffering for others. Especially in
times of crisis, in negative contrast experiences, hope is the antidote to
suffering: ‘It is those contrast experiences which make hope real, since
hope then becomes so necessary. They reveal to us the fragility of the
humanum and how incapable we are of saving ourselves. Our history of
suffering becomes a powerful reminder of how the humanum can be
threatened.’67 Schillebeeckx understands Jesus’ proclamations about the
coming kingdom of God as an eschatological hope that emerges from
his consciousness of the contrast between the history of suffering and
his experience of God as Abba: ‘Out of his Abba experience Jesus is able
to bring a message of hope not inferable from the history of our world,
whether in terms of individual or socio-political experiences – although
the hope will have to be realized even there.’68 Schillebeeckx perceives
the figure of the eschatological prophet as consistent with Jesus’ funda-
mental self-understanding; it is a category that can encompass his vari-
ous earthly activities: ‘Jesus’ preaching of the Reign of God, his proffer
of salvation, and his relationship with sinners and outcasts expressed
in parables, healings, and table fellowship, and grounded in his Abba
experience fit the profile of this expected one who comes to offer a last
chance before the culminating divine act.’69
The Sermon on the Mount with its poetic ‘benediction’ of hope attests
to the ‘already now’ and the ‘not yet’ of eschatological salvation –
especially for the poor, the hungry, and the sorrowful. Schillebeeckx’s
understanding of Jesus as eschatological prophet is demonstrated by the
Beatitudes, partly through the ethico-symbolic association of Jesus with
Moses, the prototypical eschatological prophet:
the parallels with Moses who, followed by his nearest companions and after them
a great multitude, ascends the mountain of God, where he gets from God the tablets
of stone and promulgates the Decalogue to Israel, are obvious: as a new Moses
Jesus, ‘when he sees this multitude,’ goes up the mountain and, just as Moses took
his closest associates higher up with him, ‘his disciples came to him’ (Mt 5:1), and
Jesus ‘opened his mouth and taught them, saying: blessed are the poor.’ (Mt 5:2–3).
As Matthew sees it, in the beatitudes Jesus is operating as the leader of the new
people of God, to whom a new constitution is being given – not a law but a bene-
diction, a promise of salvation.70


Schillebeeckx cites an element of tradition in the popular imagination
of Jesus’ time that had its origin in the pre-urban history of Israel – a
confident expectation preserved in the lower classes of society that the
eschatological prophet would come to alleviate the oppression of the
poor and downtrodden.71 Jesus fulfills their expectation in the Sermon on
the Mount; the kingdom of God is breaking into history:
Against humanity’s incomprehensible suffering – in so far that our being as men
affords no remedy for it – God himself now moves into action. First of all Jesus,
through that compassion of his, brings the message ‘from God’ of God’s radical ‘no’
to the continuing course of man’s suffering. The whole point of history, although
only the eschaton will make this clear, is peace, laughter, total satisfaction: the ‘final
good’ of salvation and happiness.72

But Schillebeeckx finds an even deeper meaning in the Beatitudes:
‘What they quite unmistakably enshrine is a spiritual affirmation of the
ultimate power of powerlessness.’73 By this he means that irrespective
of what human beings can and must do to improve social structures and
ameliorate poverty, disease, and oppression, only God in his gracious-
ness can save humanity: ‘at the deepest level there is a suffering, an
impotence which no human being can remove and from which we can
be liberated only by virtue of the fact that “God will rule” for the final
good of all men.’74 In the Beatitudes Jesus proclaims the profound being
of Abba – creative love and compassion; for Jesus, God is a transcendent
Being entirely opposed to evil and the conditions that cause suffering.
Even in an unredeemed world Jesus’ message is cause for celebration:
‘Jesus gives us on God’s behalf only the message that God stands surety
for us. And therefore the poor, the suffering and the deprived do indeed
have grounds for positive hope.’75 Schillebeeckx anticipates his readers’
sceptical reaction to his unsubstantiated claim by immediately asking:
‘How? Perhaps the rest of the story of Jesus’ life, as well as the failure
of his message and activities, can tell us more about that.’76
Using the historical-critical method, Schillebeeckx supports his asser-
tion that, given our powerlessness to overcome all suffering, confident
reliance on God is well-placed trust – assurance of hope for all, especially
the poor. Schillebeeckx establishes his position by critically examining
Jesus’ career: his acts of healing, forgiveness of sins, table fellowship,
cleansing of the temple, parables and enlightening discourses, and fulfil-
ment of the two great commandments. After nearly a hundred pages of
exegesis,77 Schillebeeckx answers the question he asks at the end of the
section on the Beatitudes. In the person of Jesus, God reveals his own
cause as the well-being of humanity: ‘human beings are “people whom
God cherishes”. Thus there is positive hope for everyone without excep-
tion; and in both casual and constant contact with this Jesus many of
his fellows find salvation and healing there and then. In that way many
come to a new life; they are enabled to hope once more and renew their


lives.’78 The following examples of Jesus’ eschatological activities serve
to illustrate Schillebeeckx’s extended development of ‘the ultimate power
of powerlessness’ – perhaps what in the Beatitudes is called ‘poverty of
spirit.’
It is partly through Jesus’ forgiveness of sins, as recounted in several
gospel narratives, that eschatological hope is dispensed to humanity. In
his exegesis of Lk 7:36–50, the story in which Jesus forgives the woman
of ‘ill repute’ who washes his feet, Schillebeeckx contrasts the greater
love of the sinful woman with the law-abiding but lesser virtue of the
Pharisee – on eschatological grounds: ‘The sinner-woman recognizes
the kingdom of God in Jesus: and that is just what the Pharisee does not
do. So she has the greater love; for the least in the kingdom of God is
greater, even, than a John the Baptist.’79 In another, post-Easter context
(Mk 2:10 with parallels in Mt 9:6, 8 and Lk 5:20–26), Jesus – as the ‘son
of man’ – is said to have the authority to forgive sins. The remarkable
aspect of Mark’s declaration is that neither in the book of Daniel nor in
later apocalyptic traditions is the son of man vested with the power to
forgive sins.80 Therefore, concludes Schillebeeckx, the earliest Christians,
who were all Jewish, did not ascribe the forgiveness of sins to Jesus on
the basis of pre-existing models in their tradition. Rather, real historical
events, namely Jesus’ ‘liberating intercourse with sinners,’ must be the
basis for such an unprecedented claim in early first-century Jewish
Christianity: ‘Both for the Jews and for Jewish Christians the remission
of sins is an eschatological doing of God. In the oldest, purely eschato-
logical interpretation of Jesus as the coming son of man[,] redemption
and the remission of sins still appear to be for some Christians a purely
eschatological occurrence.’81
Finally, in Mk 2:15–17 (see also Mt 9:10–13 and Lk 5:29–32), we
have a report of another historical event – Jesus’ attendance at a dinner
party of tax-collectors, who were regarded by Jews as (impure) sinners.
In verse 2:17c, Jesus assumes the role of servant-messenger of the host
Levi when he declares: ‘I have not come to call the righteous but sinners’
(considered an authentic logion of Jesus by Bas van Iersel and Rudolf
Pesch).82 Schillebeeckx interprets Mark’s report in eschatological terms:
Although himself Levi’s guest, Jesus sees his own sharing of a meal in company
with a lot of tax-collectors in the light of his role as the ‘eschatological messenger’
of God, that is, as the one who proclaims the near approach of God’s lordship and
rule and brings to tax-collectors (that is, sinners) on God’s behalf the invitation to
the eschatological feast of fellowship with God (Mt 22:1–14; Lk 14:16–24).83

Jesus’ ultimate invitation to the eschatological banquet – the symbol
of salvation – was his crucifixion. Mark perceives his ‘being delivered
into the hands of sinners’ (Mk 9:31 with 14:41), or his association with
sinners, as the real meaning of Jesus’ death. Schillebeeckx aptly defines
the crucifixion in this context as ‘the seal set on a life with the conscious


calling to invite sinners into fellowship: the eschatological fellowship
with God, a foretaste of which may be experienced when we extend
forgiveness to our fellow-man (Mk 11:25; Mt 6:14–15; 18:21–35).’84
Jesus also embodies the role of the prophet proclaiming eschatological
hope in other narratives of table fellowship and in the story of the
multiplication of loaves (a story often overlaid with a eucharistic
interpretation). In his meal-sharing association with notorious sinners,
with friends, and with his disciples – most notably in those stories in
which he acts as ‘host’ – Jesus pours the eschatological bounty of the
end time into the template of history. ‘In his earthly, historical life
the eschatological praxis of the coming rule of God is already coming
into view within the dimension of our human history here on earth.’85 We
should not see a retrospective Eucharistic gloss in the Marcan account
of the ‘miraculous feeding’ (Mk 8:1–9), Schillebeeckx argues, but an
actual historical memory of Jesus’ tradition of table fellowship. The
‘historical kernel’ of the story cannot be retrieved, yet Schillebeeckx
maintains that its purpose is revealed in Mark’s interpretation of the
episode (Mk 8:14–21): ‘This coming and being together definitely has
an eschatological significance: the dawning of the joyous time of plenty,
thanks to the presence of Jesus.’86
Jesus’ interpretation of his anticipated death in the Last Supper narrative
is an intimate expression of eschatological hope, offered to his disciples
in the form of a memorial meal.87 Implied in that promise of salvation is
Jesus’ integration of his imminent death into his life of service, despite
the apparent failure of his message about the coming kingdom of God:
‘Jesus’ death on the cross, inner consequence of the radicalism of his
message and reconciling praxis, indicates that every praxis of liberating
reconciliation that is man-directed, is valid in and of itself and not only
a posteriori, because of possibly subsequent success. It is not success
that counts, neither failure mainly due to others.’88 Moreover, the hope
symbolized by Jesus’ final repast with his disciples is also a call to
praxis, an invitation to continue his work as the eschatological prophet.
But it is a summons to action that the disciples comprehend only after
the crisis of the crucifixion has been resolved in the resurrection event
(recall the second invitation in the parable of the Reluctant Wedding
Guests): ‘Despite the objective foundation of this hope, namely what has
already been achieved in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, liber-
ation remains a task which is to be realized in the dimension of our
history.’89 That unfinished task includes the achievement of unwavering
love for God and humanity and the recognition of human failure as an
inevitable ingredient in the fragmentary reconciliation of the world and
God:

In Jesus’ ‘gratuitous’ love and identification with others, aware that it is not measured
by success but by itself in its radical love and identification with others, the true face


of both God and man were revealed. Reconciliation or liberation is only then not
a pure change of power structure and consequently a new rule, if it will claim
universality, although it yet proceeds from a historically determined and unfinished
situation. To deliver others is a given mandate; but it remains a not-yet-realized
reconciliation, which for the recalcitrant nature of our history will always bear the
marks of failure, suffering, and death – the marks of a love, powerless in this world,
but never yielding.90

Schillebeeckx explicates the historical ‘fiasco’ of Jesus’ life and
ministry as the ironic source of Christian hope. In his view, it is Jesus’
steadfast faith in God, as reported by the evangelists in the contexts of
Gethsemane and Golgotha, that gives redemptive meaning to his death
and hope to the world, despite the apparent defeat of his proclamations
about the coming kingdom.91 The episode in Gethsemane embodies the
existential crisis in which human failure and success are redefined by
Jesus in religious terms; and God’s silence at the crucifixion reveals the
full gravity of Jesus’ oneness with the divine will:
There is a good deal in the New Testament to suggest that he did not completely
understand God’s way (Gethsemane), but that he willingly accepted his fate in the
end, despite the fundamental problem that this presented to his message of the
imminent kingdom of God. Existentially, then, Jesus had to reconcile an evident
human experience of failure with his trust in the God by whom he knew that he had
been sent. He resolved to trust in God despite the darkness of his situation. This may
well be seen as the heart of the event in Gethsemane. He entrusted to God what from
a human point of view seemed to be the failure of his message.92

Jesus was not immune to the ‘ambiguity of history,’ and his identity
is not directly revealed by him but disclosed indirectly through his
lifestyle, his proclamations, and his response to death, all of which are
subject to interpretation.93 In accord with Schillebeeckx’s own perspective
on Jesus in Gethsemane and on the cross, Richard G. Cote characterizes
the spiritual transformation occasioned by the extremity of God’s silence
as the divine potential latent in situations of ambiguity:
What this great mystery illustrates is that ambiguity, however threatening, harbours
a singular grace: it can unleash the most ferocious instincts of fear and abandon-
ment, while at the same time it can expand the souls of those who put their complete
and ultimate trust in God. As with Jesus, or Mary, who on more than one occasion
exclaimed, ‘How is this possible?,’ or Abraham, our father in faith, ambiguity invites
us to reach down deeper within ourselves and there, in the ‘dark night of the soul,’
to surrender more completely to the God of Mystery. In short, ambiguity provides
the occasion, while the Spirit within gives us the grace to respond.94

Perduring communion with God, even in the desolate circumstances
of human betrayal and God’s apparent absence, mysteriously transforms
Jesus’ failure into ‘a manifestation of the power of God, the power of
love which is apparently helpless and impotent, a love which is disarmed
but at the same time disarming.’95 As in the case of the archetypal


‘suffering righteous one,’ God identifies with the one whose faith in him
and capacity to love others prevail in the most desperate situations:
the Christian knows that in the face of tyrannical power God identifies himself with
the one who can take upon himself such a historical fiasco, unarmed, but offering
exemplary resistance, in faithfulness to communion with the one who is in the last
resort the Lord of history…. At the same time this divine power in the fiasco of
Jesus reveals to us that ultimate failure, definitive evil and unreconciled suffering
have their real, final and terrifying form only in man’s reluctance and inability to love.96

The resurrection of Jesus is the full manifestation of the radical
redefinition of historical failure and success: ‘It is the resurrection which
gives the lie to the failure of the message and the life of Jesus, and at
the same time to merely human conceptions of what “real success” must
and can mean.’97 To express the same idea differently, the death-and-
resurrection of Jesus ‘is the ground of hope for a general resurrection’
and thereby the basis for a living communion with God despite personal
violation, persecution, and strife.98 Indeed, resurrection faith is a pro-
phetic indictment of the political powers that conspired not only in the
crucifixion of Jesus but in the subjugation and deaths of countless others
throughout history. ‘Therefore Christian belief in the resurrection is a
fundamental protest against the violation of personal freedom, because
this Christian faith can only be born of the conviction that a definitive
meaning is possible for human personal freedom within the total signifi-
cance of the whole of human history.’99 Death did not have the last word
in antiquity nor does it today;100 on the contrary, compassionate solidarity
with suffering humanity empowers people to establish the kingdom of
God in the here-and-now: ‘where the church lives by Jesus Christ, lives
by praying and liberating men and women in the footsteps of Jesus,
belief in the resurrection does not undergo any crisis.’101
The hope kindled by the resurrection of Jesus has a collective thrust:
‘There is not only an individual hope; the Christian opens up “the divine
virtue of hope” towards and to the advantage of his fellow man.’102 The
exemplary conduct of Christians, who live out their faith without the fear
of death, is the ‘evidence’ of which Hebrews speaks: ‘Now faith is the sub-
stance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’ (11:1 KJV).
Only through actions consistent with their faith in the resurrection of
Jesus and his promise of eternal life can Christians generate hope: ‘In
other words, the question whether Christian belief in the resurrection,
through which death unmistakably takes on another meaning, opens up
a real future for man, will have to be “proved” again and again, here and
now, from corresponding behavior on the part of Christians, from their
activities in this world.’103 Schillebeeckx poignantly expresses the cyclic
nature of such earthly activities, both within the church and outside it,
which culminate as often in failure as in success: ‘The church sees
man’s ambitious attempts to transform the world situation and she also


sees the wonderful success of these ambitious undertakings today and
their failure tomorrow. Yet, despite this cycle of success and failure, man
always continues to set about this task again and again and to begin
anew the arduous work of building up the world.’104 Schillebeeckx, like
the author of 1 Peter, says Christians have a responsibility to make evident
to others the ground of their perennial hope, the wellspring of their
ambitious endeavours:

A veiled hope seems to sustain and strengthen this world in spite of certain signs
of despair on all sides and a sense of the absurd in the history of the world. In its
teaching the church, ‘always prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you
to account for the hope that is in you’ (1 Pet. 3:15), must seize hold of this concealed
hope and invite the world to its explicit expectation: ‘If you knew the gift of God’
(Jn. 4:10) from which you, world, are unconsciously living! If only you recognized
God’s gift!105

In his explication of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Schillebeeckx states the
relationship of faith and hope concisely: ‘Faith gives substance to hope,
and as a result for believers the future is not uncertain and disquieting,
despite all the disappointments that may have been experienced. Faith is
the matrix in which hope is cast; it does not make hope into any kind of
illusion.’106 The author of Hebrews admonishes Christians to persevere
in their still veiled apprehension of eschatological reality. Schillebeeckx
says, in tandem with the imagery of Hebrews, that hope has pierced
the veil of the holy of holies, ‘with a faith which still lacks vision.’107
The suffering servants’ incisive hope has its point of origin in the faith
engendered by the expiatory death and resurrection of Jesus, eschato-
logical high priest, understood by the author of Hebrews in the context
of Israel’s salvation history. Noah and Abraham are recalled as proto-
typical examples of ancient Hebrews who followed the intangible call of
God, experienced inwardly as a summons to action, and who vigorously
persevered despite the derision and suffering occasioned by their faith.108

There is a whole series of mocked, suffering men who nevertheless have an unshak-
able faith, of whom Hebrews profoundly says, ‘They were too good for this world’
(11.38); they were already men of the new age, the world of the future – ‘yet not
one of them saw the promise fulfilled’ (11.39b). It was this that showed their faith
to be so strong, and at the same time it shows what the author understands by faith.
‘God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they (the Old Testament
men of faith) should not be made perfect’ (11.40). ‘With us’ and ‘apart from us’ refer
to the community of God, the Christians. None of these great figures saw the promise
fulfilled, because the eschatological time begins only with the exaltation of Jesus to
God (2.10; 5.9; 7.28; 10.14); only then is access to God free (9.11f.; 10.19f.).109

In a play on the word ‘rest,’ Schillebeeckx shows how the author of
Hebrews connects faith and hope through his conceptual-pictorial vision
of Jesus’ intercession for humanity in heaven. The appellation ‘God’s


rest’ is variously defined; literally, it designates the holy of holies in the
tent of the covenant and, within the tent’s interior depths, the ark –
God’s throne of grace.110 The future world, a replica of the heavenly
realm symbolized by the holy of holies, is God’s rest in which we will
share – and already do share in acts of selfless service – as well as a
support on which we can rest in the present world through faith:
In Hebrews rest always has a liturgical colouring. Thus Christian rest is both present
(4.3) and still to come (4.11). But for Hebrews rest also means ‘rest on,’ to be able
to support oneself on something or someone in order to rest. Just as Jews rest on the
Law and animal sacrifices, so Christians – by virtue of the content of their faith,
which gives substance to hope (Heb. 11), rest directly on God. For Hebrews, rest is
the same thing as justification by faith; it is present and eschatological; it will only
be realized fully after the paroikia or earthly pilgrimage of the ‘strangers in this
world’ (4.3; 4.11).111

The motif of pre-existence is integral to the concept of hope and
hope’s ultimate goal, namely rest, as elaborated in Hebrews. Not only is
Christ conceived as pre-existent, but other elements in salvation history,
such as the eschatological climax of the first age, are said by the author
of Hebrews to pre-exist: ‘Things promised for the future are already
present in heaven.’112 The hope of Hebrews makes manifest in the present
– albeit in a limited way – what has been foretold:
The understanding of hope in Hebrews, as the presence of the future, is important
for the idea of pre-existence. Christ, the representative man, is Lord of the future;
his exaltation shows this. But what precisely is the ontological status of the future?
Does it exist already or not? The answer which the auctor ad Hebraeos gives to
these questions takes the form of a doctrine of hope, founded on the eschatological
idea of pre-existence.113

Although the curtain of the holy of holies remains drawn, we can
enter into the eschaton imaginatively with the insight cultivated by hope,
grounded in faith. For Hebrews, the ‘object of this hope’ – God’s rest –
is educed from scripture: Ps 95:7–11 (Heb 3:7–11) and Gen 2:2
(Heb 4:4).114 With respect to the humanum, Schillebeeckx interprets ‘rest’
as ultimately the eschatological consummation of selfless service.115
‘Biblical rest, perfected in Jesus Christ, is in fact a human society free
from compulsion, which only finds rest in selfless living; for others with
God and Christ in their transparent midst.’116
The New Testament document of 1 Peter is another text in which the
critical concept of hope is developed with a view to the building up of a
specifically Christian vision of community. The motif of pre-existence
informs the presuppositions of this document, just as it does Hebrews.
In 1 Pet 1:3–12, the source of hope is expressed in eschatological terms
and sets forth the notion of a pre-existent heavenly birthright:
God is blessed, who has ‘begotten us to a living hope through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead’ (1:3). The fundamental Christian theologumenon – the


resurrection and exaltation of Christ – is thus introduced. Christ is the ground of our
hope, and, since he lives, it may be described as a living hope. Its object is located
where he is, in heaven, and is described as an ‘imperishable, undefiled and unfading
inheritance,’ kept in heaven and waiting to be revealed in the last time … (1:4–5).117

However, there is an important distinction between the two letters vis-
à-vis a theology of suffering for others. Schillebeeckx perceives the
expiatory sacrifice in 1 Peter not in a cultic sense, as in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, but as the Christians’ call to vulnerable love in which their
hope resides:
The great difference between 1 Peter and Hebrews, which is so closely related to it
… is that while 1 Peter interprets suffering for others as an expiatory sacrifice, it
does not understand it in a cultic sense (sacrificium propitiatorium). It sees it as an
invitation, to vulnerable love for others. Herein lies the hope of which the author
says that Christians ‘must always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who
calls them to account for the hope that is in them’ (3.15). Christians must tell the
story of this hope, but, the author adds, they must not do so in a triumphalistic way,
but ‘with gentleness and with reverence’ (3.15).118

Such hope has its ground in innocent suffering for others ‘so that these
others may be led to reflect and even to be converted, “to be brought
to God” (3.18), just as through the suffering of Jesus, Christians and
sinners are brought closer together.’119 In 1 Peter undeserved suffering
accepted humbly is purposive, for by its example non-believers may be
led to accept the offer of salvation. The unrighteous may be converted
by the example of the suffering servants, who cause their persecutors to
reflect on their hostile actions and turn away from their sins.120 Although
1 Peter grants that innocent suffering is intrinsically worthy, prior to the
sufferer’s exaltation by God, that is not the text’s main focus; rather,
the potential conversion of sinners through the innocent suffering of the
righteous is 1 Peter’s central theme and the mainspring of its hope:
In 2.12 we have clear evidence of the theme of the ‘righteous sufferer’ who is put
out of the way by his enemies; however, these have to bear the sight of the innocent
sufferer in the heavenly council, thus recognizing their mistake. They are forced to
acknowledge the true son of God. The innocent sufferer is rehabilitated before the
heavenly court of justice, and those who once mocked him have to pay homage pub-
licly. This theme, which is connected above all with the wisdom tradition, underlies
1 Peter. However, it amounts to more than that. It is an anticipation of the past [sic]
judgment. For 1 Peter, suffering for others has one particular result: it puts wrong-
doers to shame (3.16; 2.12; cf 3.1) and thus converts them.121

The life and ministry of Jesus resonate in the discipleship of the suffer-
ing servants of 1 Peter, thereby shedding light on his actual identity.122
To put it yet another way, Jesus’ faithful response to his anticipation of
death – for the sake of the kingdom of God – is the Christians’ touch-
stone for the value of their own vulnerability to suffering through and
for others: ‘the power of a love which is apparently helpless and impotent,


a love which is disarmed but at the same time disarming.’123 Faith in
Jesus’ unbroken communion with God in the face of death motivates
Christians to fearless and hope-filled activity. Even when there is no
longer a rational basis for hope in a given situation, Schillebeeckx says
that Christians must work as if there is, joyfully embracing the limitation
or risk inherent in any selfless act: ‘So joy is bought even in negative
suffering, in failure and helplessness. That, too, is a form of liberation,
albeit in a world that is still unhealed.’124 This may even be the deepest
import of Jesus as our prophetic, eschatological prototype – the trans-
formation of failure and suffering into a constructive and critical force.125

IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Anamnesis, or critical remembrance, and eschatological hope –
perceived as intrinsic to the eschatological images of Jesus as prophet
and priest – are models for Christian praxis. Anamnesis – the memoria
passionis Christi – is understood as a living biblical tradition from which
new memories, new experiences of resistance to suffering emerge. The
critical remembrance of Jesus’ passion and of suffering humanity inspire
practical action in the present; the liturgical tradition of recounting lib-
erating actions of biblical personages is the paradigm for socio-political
protest against existing structures that oppress, dehumanize, or impoverish
people. Habermas’s principle of the unity of theory and practice is also
influential in Schillebeeckx’s conception of critical remembrance, which
comprises a balance of socio-political theory derived from contemplation
and theologically informed praxis. His principle for the interpretation of
reality – the authority of experience mediated by reference to the history
of tradition and to the eschatological future – is central to his re-
conceptualization of liturgy as a spur to action that overcomes suffering.
The authority of experience, mediated by reference to both past and future,
culminates in narratives of suffering that eventuate in Christian praxis.
The Epistle to the Hebrews illustrates several of the elements of
anamnesis as Schillebeeckx conceives it: the continuity of world history
and salvation history; critical recollection of tradition with a view to
the eschatological future as promised by Christ; a dual focus on the
redemptive suffering of Jesus and the transcendent reality of God; and
the practise of prophetic criticism resulting from the tension between the
remembered history of suffering and a vision of pre-existent salvation
history in the heavenly realm. Schillebeeckx’s dialogue with Metz
regarding the realization of salvation within world history is relevant to
the paradigm in Hebrews. Although both theologians espouse the essen-
tial unity of world history and salvation history, Schillebeeckx criticizes
Metz’s political theology on the grounds that the relation of God to


Christ’s passion is not adequately developed in Metz. Specifically, he
finds that suffering humanity inadvertently assumes God’s place in Metz’s
theology. Hebrews provides a theological corrective to Metz in its dual
emphasis on God’s transcendence and on Jesus’ humanity and self-
transcendence through conformity to the will of God.
The retrieval and re-evaluation of forgotten or suppressed traditions
in the history of the church is also a type of critical remembrance. The
contemporary phenomenon of critical communities exemplifies the
mutually critical correlation of past ecclesial traditions and present
experience, leading to liberating practises, such as the active ministry
of now-married priests and the celebration of the mass by women and
other non-ordained church leaders.126 Through his critical analysis of
priestly ordination by way of its historical reconstruction, Schillebeeckx
identifies laws of ritual purity as an ossified rationale for the exclusively
celibate male clergy. The redefinition of priesthood in Hebrews, namely
the rejection of Levitical exclusivity, parallels the contemporary chal-
lenge to the official priesthood by alternative communities, which
Schillebeeckx has championed and for which he was called to account
by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.127
Schillebeeckx has also integrated into his theology of suffering for
others the more comprehensive interpretation of ‘the critical recollection
of tradition,’ drawing upon the works of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse,
Kolakowski, and Ricoeur (among others). The remembered traditions of
world history, especially the forgotten and suppressed contributions and
values of marginalized, conquered, or disempowered peoples, is integral
to Schillebeeckx’s critical, eschatological orientation. Related to the
critical recollection of traditions is his critique of the amorphous Enlighten-
ment ideal of universal brotherhood; as a corrective to the ahistorical
Enlightenment vision, Schillebeeckx posits Jesus of Nazareth as the
essential historical criterion for a universal human community. For
Schillebeeckx, anamnesis is not only the commemoration of a holy event
but a critical tool – a kind of divining rod – in the quest for the kingdom
of God, which includes all those who have gone before and suffered for
the sake of a renovated world. Although Schillebeeckx is adamantly
unwilling to define the humanum in a definitive manner, the following
passage provides an intimation of his eschatological sensibilities:
‘Kingdom of God,’ a key term in the message of Jesus, is the biblical expression for
the nature of God – unconditional and liberating sovereign love – in so far as this
comes to fruition in the lives of men and women who do God’s will, and is mani-
fested in them. The kingdom of God is a new relationship of human beings to God,
with as its tangible and visible side a new type of liberating relationship between
men and women, within a peaceful, reconciled society.128

Schillebeeckx’s discernment of hope as an eschatological concept
is predicated on the transformation of the history of suffering into a


constructive and critical force, as exemplified particularly in Jesus of
Nazareth. He understands Jesus’ preaching about the coming kingdom
of God as a message of hope that emerges from Jesus’ consciousness of
the contrast between the history of suffering and his experience of God
as Abba. Schillebeeckx’s exegesis of the biblical passages discussed
above – taken from the Beatitudes, narratives of Jesus’ forgiveness of
sins, and stories of his table fellowship – lay the foundation for the
development of hope as the antidote to suffering and as a presentiment
of eschatological salvation. The Last Supper narrative is also a summons
to liberating action issued by Jesus to his disciples, just as the anamnesis
of liturgy, derived from the same narrative, is a call to praxis in the present.
Implicit in the account(s) of the memorial meal is Jesus’ integration of
his death into his life of service, giving redemptive value to his ultimate
sacrifice for the sake of others. Schillebeeckx sees in Jesus’ inseparable
life, ministry, and death the tacit redefinition of historical failure and
success. The poignant ambiguity of Gethsemane and of Jesus’ forlorn
cry from the cross are interpreted by Schillebeeckx as Jesus’ abiding
communion with God (to which Psalm 22 in its entirety attests). Rather
than the defeat of his message, Jesus’ crucifixion – his steadfast devotion
to God’s will for human salvation – is the transformation of failure into the
fulfilment of the eschatological promise. And it provides a model for all
Christians in the context of their own existential crises.
The resurrection of Jesus is the full manifestation of the redefinition
of failure and success and issues in the disciples’ living communion
with God and the hope of a general resurrection. In a more radical vein,
resurrection faith is a prophetic criticism of political abuses and the
violation of personal freedom as well as a vindication of the suffering
righteous ones. The hope of which Hebrews speaks is defined in relation
to faith, which engenders hope through Jesus’ vicarious and expiatory
sacrifice as well as through his resurrection. The aim of the Jewish-
Christian community’s hope is rest, symbolically construed as both
the Sabbath – God’s rest – and a support during the time between Jesus’
exaltation and the eschaton. Schillebeeckx interprets Hebrews’ concept
of rest as the eschatological consummation of selfless service patterned
after Jesus’ unremitting petition for humanity in heaven during the inter-
vening period. The pre-existence of salvation history is vital to the de-
velopment of the ‘doctrine of hope’ in Hebrews. Even though the curtain
of the holy of holies separates humanity from full participation in the
kingdom of God, Christians can anticipate the eschaton and strive to
actualize salvation history with the foresight nurtured by hope.
The source and object of hope in 1 Peter, as in Hebrews, is conceived
as a pre-existent heavenly inheritance – the promised salvation accom-
plished in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But there is an important
distinction between the two letters: Schillebeeckx perceives the expiatory
sacrifice in 1 Peter not in a cultic sense but as the Christians’ invitation


to vulnerable love, which is the very ground of their hope and their
inspiration to engage in selfless activity for the sake of God’s kingdom.
The core presupposition of 1 Peter is that undeserved suffering, by its
very example, leads others to accept the offer of salvation. Suffering is
not valued for its own sake, rather only in so far as it promotes the con-
version of the unrighteous. The life and ministry of Jesus are reflected
in 1 Peter’s picture of the suffering servants, who illumine Jesus’ actual
identity. His unbroken communion with God in Gethsemane and on the
cross motivates the intrepid Christians of 1 Peter to persevere despite the
many acts of persecution that assail them. Even when hope has been
exhausted in a given situation, Schillebeeckx says that Christians must
willingly accept their vulnerability and carry on despite the limitations
and inherent dangers of their particular circumstances. He proposes that
the transformation of failure and suffering into a critical and construct-
ive force is Jesus’ eschatological legacy to the world and a model for the
suffering servants of any age.

Notes
1 Schillebeeckx’s reconceptualization of liturgy is discussed in Elizabeth K. Tillar, ‘The
Influence of Social Critical Theory on Edward Schillebeeckx’s Theology of Suffering for Others,’
The Heythrop Journal: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology 42 (2001), pp. 167–168.
2 Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘From Hermeneutical Theology to Critical Theory,’ in The Schillebeeckx
Reader, ed. Robert Schreiter (New York: Crossroad, 1984), pp. 106–119; idem, ‘The Christian and
the World,’ in The Schillebeeckx Reader, pp. 257–259; and idem, Christ, p. 820.
3 Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, trans. John Bowden (New
York: Crossroad, 1980), p. 820. Schillebeeckx has engaged in dialogue with J.-B. Metz concerning
the concept ‘remembered suffering.’ The internal quote ‘dangerous memorial formulas’ is derived
from Johannes B. Metz, ‘The Future in the Memory of Suffering,’ Concilium 6, no. 8 (June 1972),
pp. 9–25.
4 Schillebeeckx, Christ, p. 812.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 811.
7 Schillebeeckx’s conception of critical remembrance has been influenced by the work of
P. Ricoeur, M. Horkheimer, T. Adorno, J. Habermas, H. Marcuse, L. Kolakowski, J.-B. Metz, and
W. Oelmüller (ibid., p. 896 n. 147).
8 Ibid., pp. 287–288.
9 Ibid., pp. 275–276.
10 Ibid., p. 239.
11 Ibid., p. 288. See ibid., pp. 561–567 for a discussion of the early Churches’ recognition of the
need for ethical action and structural reform, even though their praxis was limited to the boundaries
of their local congregations.
12 Ibid., p. 283.
13 Ibid., p. 285.
14 Ibid., pp. 275–276.
15 Ibid., p. 275.
16 Bradford E. Hinze, ‘A Prophetic Vision: Eschatology and Ethics,’ in The Praxis of Christian
Experience: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Robert J. Schreiter and
Mary Catherine Hilkert (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 134.
17 Edward Schillebeeckx, The Mission of the Church, trans. N. D. Smith (New York: Seabury
Press, 1973), p. 66.
19 Ibid., p. 753.
20 Ibid.


21 Johann-Baptist Metz, ‘The Future in the Memory of Suffering,’ in Faith and the Future:
Essays on Theology, Solidarity, and Modernity, by Johann-Baptist Metz and Jürgen Moltmann
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995), pp. 6–7. See also idem, ‘The Church After Auschwitz,’
Theology Digest 41, no. 1 (Spring 1994): pp. 21–24; and idem, ‘Theology as Theodicy,’ Pacifica:
Australian Theological Studies 5 (1992), pp. 274–287.
22 Ibid., p. 754.
23 Ibid., p. 755.
24 Ibid., p. 756.
25 Ibid., p. 278.
26 Edward Schillebeeckx, World and Church, trans. N.D. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward,
1971), p. 99.
27 Edward Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith: Interpretation and Criticism, trans.
N. D. Smith (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), p. 152.
29 Ibid., p. 287. See also Schillebeeckx’s statements about the ‘exodus’ model of church com-
munity, which he thinks must be reinterpreted in different historical contexts (ibid., pp. 560–561).
30 Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Experience and Christian Revelation,’ in The Schillebeeckx Reader,
p. 85.
31 Ibid.
32 Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden (New York:
Crossroad, 1990), pp. 28–29.
33 Ibid., p. 28.
34 Mary Catherine Hilkert, ‘Discovery of the Living God: Revelation and Experience,’ in
The Praxis of Christian Experience: An Introduction to the Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, ed.
Robert J. Schreiter and Mary Catherine Hilkert (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 39.
35 Schillebeeckx, Church, p. 30.
36 Hilkert, p. 47. Schillebeeckx’s inclusion of narrative in his theology of suffering has much in
common with the primacy of narrative in J.-B. Metz’s theology. See Johann Baptist Metz, ‘A Short
Apology of Narrative,’ trans. David Smith, in Why Narrative?: Readings in Narrative Theology,
ed. Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones (Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmanns, 1989),
pp. 251–262; and Michon Marie Matthiesen, ‘Narrative or Suffering: Complementary Reflections
of Theological Anthropology in Johann Metz and Elie Wiesel,’ Religion and Literature 182, no. 2
(1986), pp. 47–63.
37 Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Christian Theology and the Theologian,’ in The Schillebeeckx Reader,
p. 114.
37 Susan A. Ross, ‘Salvation in and for the World: Church and Sacraments,’ in Praxis, p. 108.
39 Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. Hubert Hoskins (New
York: Crossroad, 1979), p. 592.
40 Ross, p. 108.
42 Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘The Church’s Ministry,’ in The Schillebeeckx Reader, pp. 231–239.
Schillebeeckx identifies the dichotomy of the heavenly church and the earthly church as the mis-
taken conception that obstructs the renewal of the official church ministry, despite the statement of
Vatican II (Lumen Gentium I, 8) that the earthly and heavenly churches must be understood as
indivisible (ibid., p. 233).
43 William L. Portier, ‘Ministry From Above and/or Ministry from Below: An Examination of
the Ecclesial Basis of Ministry According to Edward Schillebeeckx,’ Communio: International
Catholic Review 12 (1985), pp. 181–182. See Edward Schillebeeckx, Ministry: Leadership in the
Community of Jesus Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1981); and idem, ‘The Christian Community and
Its Office Bearers,’ Concilium 133 (1980), pp. 95–133. See a refutation of Ministry in Pierre Grélot,
Église et ministères, pour un dialogue critique avec Edward Schillebeeckx (Paris: Cerf, 1983). But
both Yves Congar and James P. Mackey expressed their positive responses to Schillebeeckx’s
pioneering work in ministry. See Yves Congar, ‘Bulletin d’Ecclésiologie’, Revue des Sciences
Philosophiques et Théologiques 72 (1988), p. 114; and James P. Mackey, Modern Theology: A Sense
of Direction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 142.
44 Schillebeeckx, ‘The Church’s Ministry,’ p. 230. See also Mary E. Hines, ‘The Praxis of the
Kingdom of God,’ in Praxis, pp. 116–130; and Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Critical Communities and
Office in the Church,’ in God Is New Each Moment: Edward Schillebeeckx in Conversation
with Huub Oosterhuis and Piet Hoogeveen, trans. David Smith (New York: Seabury Press, 1983),
pp. 79–90.

46 Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Critical Theories and Christian Political Commitment,’ in Political
Commitment and Christian Community, ed. Alois Müller and Norbert Greinacher, Concilium Series:
Religion in the Seventies (New York: Herder and Herder, 1973), p. 57. See Leszek Kolakowski,
‘Der Anspruch auf die selbstverschuldete Unmündigkeit,’ in Leonhard Reinisch, ed. Vom Sinn der
Tradition (Munich, 1970), p. 3; and Jürgen Habermas, Philosophisch -politische Profile (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1971), p. 35.
47 Schillebeeckx,Christ, p. 896 n. 147.
48 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘On Tradition,’ Telos 94 (1993), p. 78.
49 Schillebeeckx, Jesus, p. 592. See also ‘The Rationalizing of Human Suffering by the Enlight-
enment’ (idem Christ, pp. 704–706).
50 Schillebeeckx, Jesus, p. 591. It is instructive to contrast the vague utopia of the Enlighten-
ment with the ‘ground-level communities’ or ‘cells’ that some social scientists think are ‘the only
effective means of influencing the whole for the good of all’ (ibid., p. 592).
51 Ibid., p. 592.
52 Ibid., p. 593.
53 Ibid., p. 594.
55 See Edward Schillebeeckx, God and Man, trans. Edward Fitzgerald and Peter Tomlinson,
Theological Soundings (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969).
56 Schillebeeckx, Jesus, p. 581.
57 See Leonard Swidler, ‘Dialogue: the Way Toward Consensus,’ in Consensus in Theology?:
A Dialogue with Hans Küng and Edward Schillebeeckx, ed. Leonard Swidler (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1980), pp. iii–viii; and Schillebeeckx, Church, p. 44.
58 Ibid., pp. 170–171.
59 Hans Küng, ‘Toward a New Consensus in Catholic (and Ecumenical) Theology,’ in Consensus
in Theology, pp. 7–8.
61 Ibid., p. 109.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., p. 44.
64 Hinze, p. 142.
65 Schillebeeckx, Christ, p. 820. See also Hilkert, p. 47.
67 Robert Schreiter, ed., ‘Edward Schillebeeckx: An Orientation to His Thought,’ in The
Schillebeeckx Reader, p. 18.
68 Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Basic Elements of Jesus’ Message and Praxis,’ in The Schillebeeckx
Reader, p. 148.
69 Gabriel Fackre, ‘Bones Strong and Weak in the Skeletal Structure of Schillebeeckx’s
Christology,’ Journal of Ecumenical Studies 21, (1984), p. 266.
71 Ibid., pp. 174–177.
72 Ibid., p. 177.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid., p. 178.
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid., pp. 179–271.
78 Ibid., p. 269.
79 Ibid., p. 208.
80 Ibid., pp. 208–209.
81 Ibid., p. 209.
82 Ibid., pp. 210–211. See Bas van Iersel, ‘La vocation de Lévi (Mk 2:13–17; Mt 9:9–13;
Lk 5:27–32),’ in De Jésus aux Évangiles, II (Gembloux, 1967), pp. 212–232; and Rudolf Pesch,
‘Das Zöllnergastmahl (Mk 2:15–17),’ in Mélanges Bibliques, offertes au R.P.B. Rigaux (Gembloux,
1970), pp. 63–87.
84 Ibid., p. 212.
85 Ibid., p. 213.
86 Ibid., p. 215.


87 Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Rejection, Death, and Resurrection,’ in The Schillebeeckx Reader,
p. 154. ‘Now religions and the church are precisely the anamnesis, the memory of this universal
salvific will and saving presence of God, ground of all hope’ (idem, ‘The Christian and the World,’
in The Schillebeeckx Reader, p. 257).
88 Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘God, Society and Human Salvation,’ in Faith and Society/Foi et
Société Geloof En Maatschappij: Acta Congressus Internationalis Theologici Lovaniensis 1976,
ed. Marc Caudron, vol. XLVII, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium (Paris:
Éditions Duculot, 1978), p. 98.
90 Schillebeeckx, ‘God, Society and Human Salvation,’ pp. 98–99.
91 See Schillebeeckx, Jesus, pp. 274–294.
94 Richard D. Cote, ‘God Sings in the Night: Ambiguity as an Invitation to Believe,’ in Where
Is God?: A Cry of Human Distress, vol. 4, Concilium Series, ed. Christian Duquoc and Casiano
Floristan (London: SCM Press, 1992), p. 101.
96 Ibid., p. 831.
97 Ibid., p. 829.
98 Ibid., p. 801.
99 Ibid., p. 800.
100 See the section titled ‘Victory over death, the “last enemy”’ on the history of ideas about
death in the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions (ibid., pp. 797–801).
103 Ibid.
104 Schillebeeckx, World and Church, p. 113.
105 Ibid.
107 Ibid., p. 280.
108 Ibid., pp. 280–281.
109 Ibid., p. 282.
110 Ibid., p. 269.
111 Ibid., p. 289.
112 R. G. Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-existence, Wisdom, and the Son of Man: A Study of the Idea of
Pre-existence in the New Testament, vol. 21, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series,
ed. Matthew Black and R. McL. Wilson (Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 248, 250.
113 Ibid., p. 249.
114 Ibid.
115 Schillebeeckx, Christ, pp. 288–289.
116 Ibid., p. 289.
117 Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-existence, pp. 258–259.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid., pp. 227–228.
121 Ibid.
122 Ibid., p. 229.
123 Ibid., pp. 228–229, 830.
124 Ibid., p. 514.
125 Ibid., p. 743. The radical understanding of failure that Schillebeeckx has developed, as it
applies to Jesus and others who seek to promote good and discredit evil, is relevant to this point
(ibid., pp. 793–794, 827–829).
126 Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘The Christian Community and Its Office Bearers,’ in The Language
of Faith: Essays on Jesus, Theology, and the Church, Concilium Series (Maryknoll NY: Orbis
Books, 1995), pp. 127–166. See also Portier, pp. 181–182.
127 Portier, p. 191. See also Swidler, pp. iii–viii.
128 Schillebeeckx, On Christian Faith, p. 19.

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